When war closed the racetrack, the airfield was co-opted by the Navy and recast as a blimp base where blimp squadrons patrolled the coastline for Japanese submarines

Myths & Legends Of Del Mar
An island of tranquility between the pounding Pacific surf and the raging steel river of Interstate 5, Del Mar is a study in paradox. While its quiet, speed-bumped drives and preserved lagoons provide a refuge from the surge and bustle of the surrounding city, its signature attraction draws the focused attention and teeming millions to the only-recently rechristened San Diego County Fair every summer. The shifting sands and slowly eroding bluffs betray little evidence of the odd, all but forgotten chapters of Del Mar’s history, and it is only in the voices of local historians that the echoes of the town’s roaring history still reverberates.

As modern San Diego casts about for the ideal locale for a new airport, residents would do well to recall the old one, a full-fledged airstrip alongside the San Dieguito Lagoon, near the present I-5 roadbed. "In those days," says NBC reporter and About San Diego host Ken Kramer, "they didn’t stress about it." Inaugurated as an emergency landing strip by the Navy in the ’20s, San Dieguito Field became a thriving civilian airport in 1938 to bring high-rolling tourists directly to the track. The 3,500-foot runway handled six DC-3s daily, as well as the souped-up private planes of daredevil tycoons like Howard Hughes. When war closed the racetrack, the airfield was co-opted by the Navy and recast as a blimp base. Two 250-foot K-type blimps from Santa Ana’s ZP-31 blimp squadron moored and refueled at the airfield’s masts, and patrolled the coastline for Japanese submarines.

A glimpse of this surprising face of Del Mar can still be seen in the 1944 Wallace Beery war film, This Man’s Navy, shot on location at the Naval Auxiliary base. The Del Mar airport resumed flights after the war, but Kramer explains that the airport was a victim of the automobile. In 1959, "It was taken out when Interstate 5 was built, but until recently, if you were driving south and looked off to the right, you could still see some of the old foundations."

Del Mar’s irresistible charms drew the first settlers as early as 11,000 years ago. Excavations of shell mounds along the San Dieguito River describe how La Jolla Indians migrated and adapted from hunting mastodons and wild horses to a diet of abalone and other shellfish, and the centuries of simple plenty they enjoyed until Spanish missionaries arrived in 1769.

The lives of Del Mar villagers were not so different from the Indians’ in a broader sense, and their peaceful simplicity was just as thoroughly — and far more pleasantly — turned inside out by the arrival of a fresh wave of invaders: Hollywood celebrities. Even before Bing Crosby, Jimmy Durante, and Pat O’Brien put Del Mar on the map with their celebrated racetrack, Del Mar became a favorite stopover for entertainers en route to the equine action at Tijuana’s Agua Caliente.

Not all of Del Mar’s residents have fit in so gracefully, however. Sanford Adler came from Las Vegas with his operation after fellow "hotelier" Ben "Bugsy" Siegel was murdered, and bought the old Hotel Del Mar. Del Mar Historical Society past president Don Terwilliger vividly remembers Adler’s unusual advent from his childhood. "He built a compound for his family in Crest Canyon, with bright lights and armed guards, because he was afraid he’d be bumped off, too."

Adler took over and refurbished the Del Mar Plunge and the Stratford Inn Garage, where he set up a full-service casino; but he must have failed to grease the right palms, because the lavish gaming facility was raided just before opening night. Adler soaked up the hit and turned legitimate, though Terwilliger remembers visiting a special locked room in the Hotel Del Mar as a child with his aunt, a longterm hotel resident. Though modest in scope, the room was lined with slot machines.

Adler’s other gift to Del Mar was a night club, which, in its brief, stormy life, brought fledgling talents like Liberace, Carmen Miranda, Dean Martin, and Jerry Lewis to the sleepy beach town, which balked at the steep $2.50 cover charge.

Locals and discreet tourists could try their luck at other open secret casinos like the gallant Spanish-style Marston Harding Castle, a popular post-war hangout. No scandal or police action ever spoiled the castle’s fun, though on New Year’s Eve, 1940, plumber Ed Dunham was called to extract a woman trapped in a toilet bowl. He had to break the bowl to get her out.

Even when the racetrack crowds cleared out and the village dwindled back to its native 300, there was still no shortage of scandal and threats to the civic order. On Halloween, 1929, a gang of kids went on a window-soaping rampage, only to clean them the next day for honest pay. Constable Joe Sage chased the miscreants around town in his Model A Ford. Another worthy peacekeeper, red-headed W. "Bill" Thompson, ruled the roads of 1940s Del Mar with a whip hand and a hair-trigger ticket book. Allegedly, the Harley-riding cop cited his wife for an illegal left turn on California Road as she drove home to make his lunch.

Terwilliger also recalls a number of other curious and colorful characters who set Del Mar apart from its neighbors — from Eugenia Clare Smith, the wild Arbuckle coffee heiress who frolicked up and down the coast dripping with extravagant jewelry and accompanied by a succession of gigolos — to the nameless hermit who tended the garbage dump off Del Mar Heights Road on Nogales, and also managed the popular nudist camp across the street. One tragic event many Del Martians would rather forget brought out the less idyllic side of the community, and shows its residents were not so different from small towns the world over. When a train derailed and wrecked on the Ninth Street embankment in 1940, popcorn vendors, souvenir booths, and other attractions sprang up overnight, and the festivities continued for several days until cranes were able to haul the wreckage away.

When asked how Del Mar managed to retain its small-town identity through decades of hosting famous faces, columnist and former Del Mar mayor Don Arballo sums it up best. "They were all very friendly," he says of the celebrity visitors, "and they liked Del Mar because they weren’t hounded for autographs. Betty Grable used to play volleyball with the local people on the beach, and Jimmy Durante would go fishing with us on the pier, which is no longer there." Like the Indians who preceded them, Del Mar natives worked, swam, and fished in their paradoxical paradise; but when no one was looking, they welcomed celebrities into their midst, and kept the secret of how loudly their quiet town roared.
— Cody Goodfellow, photos courtesy of the Del Mar Historical Society